


A Part of Me I'd Never Seen

by myrmeraki



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Astronomical Symbolism, Backstory, Character Death, Coda, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Emotional Hurt, Episode Related, Episode: s01e22 What Kind of Day Has It Been, Episode: s02e02 In the Shadow of Two Gunmen: Part 2, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Gun Violence, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I'm Sorry, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Rosslyn, Sorry for that too, Stargazing, no beta we die like josh, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29221377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmeraki/pseuds/myrmeraki
Summary: An ITSOTG divergence fic inspired by "All I Want" by Kodaline. I think you know where this is going.
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Sam Seaborn
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	A Part of Me I'd Never Seen

**Author's Note:**

> all I want is nothing more  
> to hear you knocking at my door  
> 'cause if I could see your face once more  
> i could die a happy man, I'm sure
> 
> This fic is heavily inspired by All I Want by Kodaline, go listen to it if you want the ~full experience~

Sam died twice before tonight.

The first was seven minutes and twenty-three seconds after he was born in a cold fluorescent hospital on an unimportant day in June. He crawled out into existence one month and two days too early, screaming because he existed too much and too soon, and several minutes seconds later he stopped breathing. He was charged with apnea of prematurity and stage two retinopathy of prematurity, and sentenced to a few weeks in NICU with an incubator and tubes and checkups and treatments. 

The apnea went away before his parents brought him home, bundled in a light green blanket flecked with cartoon teddy bears. The retinopathy eased and left his eyes and surrounding blood vessels mostly intact. Sam was left with mild myopia that would get steadily worse as he got older. Which meant that when he left the hospital, four and a half pounds, he had been fighting a war all his life. Which meant Sam would grow up without memory of the first weeks of his life being a question mark tied with cannulas, just knowing how close he had come but never really living it. Which meant Sam was, all in all, put together. But just barely. 

The photobooks with his name held baby-handprints smaller than usual, and up until third grade, he was always the shortest boy in class. 

\-------------

It was dark the first time they kissed, the kind that seeped into Sam's cheekbones until he rubbed his eyes and couldn't differentiate between the real stars in the sky and the manufactured ones behind his eyelids. They were in Lower Senate Park, throwing pennies into the drained fountain that bounced along the stone like comets, and Josh's knuckles were red, and Sam's mom was dying for the second time. 

There was something both inside of her and outside of her, bigger than her, and it was swallowing her up. Right now it was in her lungs. Rather, it _was_ her lungs. She hated that Sam was a smoker, and Sam always reminded her that he was not a smoker, he just smoked on occasion. Once every month or more, like when his mom was dying again and they failed to pass a bill through the House again and his hands were shaking, again. 

And Josh took the cigarette from his lips before he could light it, and tossed it in the fountain, and said, _Don't do that shit in front of me, I hate the smell._ _Hey, look at that._

And Josh tilted his head back, pointing to the moon above them with his cracked hands, round and waxy and cut into the sky like a spotlight. And Sam said, _God what a beautiful night_. 

And Josh grabbed him by his tie and pressed their mouths together, and Sam wanted nicotine but he would settle for this, for Josh's hands on his chest and the back of his neck, and when Josh bit his bottom lip and slid his tongue into Sam's mouth, cold, Sam thought, _God what a beautiful boy_. 

Sam thought, _You asshole. You motherfucker. What the fuck am I supposed to do with the moon now?_

\-------------

Sam learned how to swim when he was three, the basic and flailing movements that would keep him afloat if he ever found himself drowning without his parents. His parents have pictures and a corrupted home-video of his father throwing him into their swimming pool, red swim trunks and all. It shows him sinking and gasping technicolor bubbles until he's not falling anymore- he's floating. He breaks through the surface crying, and that's when the tape stops.

Stories of getting him ice cream afterward while wrapped in a bath towel were imprinted on old celluloid and passed along with the gravy at Thanksgiving. 

Sam doesn't remember this one either, but he still smiled and shrugged and assured all the aunts and uncles that he was still as strong a swimmer as ever. Yes, Aunt Cathy, and yes Uncle Ar, and yes Cousin Bo, Sam did take real swim lessons after that.

 _I'd never met a boy so taken to the water! Good thing you learned when you did, or you'd gone in any way without knowing, and then we'd all be in big trouble._

He won his first swim medal when he was eight. The fifty butterfly. 34.02, he took home the gold and held it between his teeth like in the Olympics, one hand up in the air and hair sticking out of the back of his swim cap. 

Sam remembers being terrified he'd get attacked by a shark in the chlorinated pool despite all evidence to the impossibility, and it was fear that drove him to push out of the water in leaps and kick his legs together like a dolphin. If dolphins could outrun great whites in the Pacific he could lose the imaginary shark in the Laguna Community Pool. 

It was terror that made him win. He remembered that. 

\-------------

Josh woke up crying in the middle of the night after their first time. Sam's bed shook and for a split second, he was back in California in middle school scrambling to the halls as the teachers said "earthquake". 

Sam reached across the chasm of his mattress and laid a hand on Josh's shaking shoulder. His skin was warm, and Sam rubbed circles on the muscle with his palm until Josh turned to him. 

_I didn't wanna wake you._

_I'm a light sleeper. No chance of sneaking away._

_I wasn't gonna leave._

_Yes, you were_.

Sam knew him well enough to see that half the reason they did this at Sam's place, aside from it being closer to the office for a staggered arrival and the bottle of cheap prosecco in his cabinet, was the knowledge that if anything went south Josh might have been able to run away in the morning. Unfortunately for him, Sam actually _was_ a light sleeper. 

_What can I do?_

_Just go back to sleep, I'll go to the bathroom._

_Stay_. 

And Josh did stay, all the way through the night as it turned into morning. Sam wrapped his arms around him and let Josh rest his head against on Sam's chest as Sam stayed awake through the rising sun that turned the sky from empty to explosive in minutes. It was a clouded night, no stars and no moon, and with Josh in his arms, Sam thought the world had stopped on its axis and been thrown off its ecliptic. 

Until the sun crept up, the sky showing signs of its existence before physical evidence presented, and Josh rolled closer to Sam and sighed, and Sam kissed the top of his head before he could wake up and make fun of him. He wasn't quite fast enough. 

_You're a sap._

_And you're okay._

_I'm sorry about that. It's- it won't happen again._

_Yes, it will._

Josh pressed his lips together and rubbed his eyes like he was still burry and unfocused and needed to force the outlines of his body to bleed into the picture of the day. 

_Yeah, it might._

_And I'll be right here for you. You'll be okay. I swear, Josh, everything's gonna be okay._

\----------

The second time was three weeks after he graduated 8th grade. Fourteen, Sam thought, was the new twenty, and it was time for him to start doing grown things. Things like riding in his friend's older sister's Jeep to the cliffs by the ocean where all the high schoolers hung out. 

Sam burned his nose and his chest in the late-June sun, peeling off his t-shirt and lying on the rocks all day with his friends, laughing about nothing and knocking back cans of Bud Light diluted with accidental saltwater. The sky and the ocean merged on the horizon, even as the day bled into dusk, and if Sam stretched his arms out, out, out, against the rock and measured his breathing, he could believe he was suspended over the mass of water and gas instead of shackled by gravity. 

_Okay no, that was fucking ridiculous._

_Yeah, but I did it!_

_Did not, you pussy, you told her you were asking her out on a dare and that's why she pretended to say yes!_

_Well, you didn't say I couldn't tell her._

His friends were exchanging challenges, the going rate was one completed dare for five bucks, or another can of beer bummed from someone's friend's older cousin or just an IOU for burgers tomorrow. 

_Hey Sammy, you're up._

_Man, he's too busy faking being high._

Sam reached up to his face and pushed his sunglasses up, stretching his arms and his knees, tanned skin pulled tight over his bones like a shadow puppet. 

_It's not Sammy anymore, man. And I'm not high I'm jus' thinking._

_Weird-ass. You're up. I dare you-_

_I dare you to jump!_

It was supposed to be a joke. Cliff jumping was reserved for the real high schoolers, and even in their large circle of underage risk-takers and alcoholics and genuine pubescent idiocy, it was dangerous. It wasn't even supposed to happen, but Sam stood up, finished off the rest of his beer with a grimace, and tossed his sunglasses to his friend. 

_I was joking, Sammy._

_Dare you to take one of Darren's beers._

_Hey, come on Sam._

Truth was, he would have jumped eventually, even if they didn't ask him to. They begged him not to, actually, but Sam stood on the edge of the dry rock anyway, his toes curled over the edge and his hands into sweaty fists, swaying in the wind instead of stiff so the breeze would not raze him. The sun was starting to darken, not quite far along in the dusk enough for pinks and oranges and smoke remnants of clouds to turn the horizon into something bigger than themselves, but it was more than enough. 

It was a twenty-foot drop, and if you didn't go far enough you ran the risk of being pushed into the side of the cliff by the waves. If you jumped too far or swam too far, you might get caught in a riptide, and then you were dead anyway. Sam could finally hear the blood in his ears, and he thought _is it really possible to die and come back?_

_What the fuck Sam, quit it._

He looked up for an early-rise moon that might have given him wisdom and found the sky unblemished. 

The photographs from that summer displayed the remnants of Sam pieced together again. Bruises all over his face, three fractured ribs, seven stitches across his side, a concussion, and his arm broken in two places. They told him he was lucky he didn't break his legs, or his back, or his neck. Sam remembered white-hot pain, and then nothing, nothing, nothing at all. He felt dead, and he felt beautiful. 

That was the summer he volunteered for his first campaign. Eric Lawson, a democrat for alderman with a 47% chance. They won by 1,627 votes. Sam and his friends on the campaign bought party kazoos and watched the results together. When the votes were counted without fanfare or glory while most of California was watching Hawaii-Five-0 instead, Sam sat with his arm in a blue cast on Andre Mont's couch with kids that were either his age or in college as they feasted on cake and snickers bars. 

The most Sam had done with his premature brain and his half-out-of-commission arms was run papers or get coffee or clean up after hours. He only met the guy once. Looking back on it, he didn't do much of anything, but it was the first time he stood in a room and knew something good had happened, and however small it was, he had a hand in it. He was not scared anymore. 

\-------------

_You know it's been two years since you kissed me?_

You _kissed_ me _, actually._

Josh frowned, taking a swallow of orange juice. Drops of liquid fell down his chin and Josh wiped it with the back of his hand.

_Well, semantics, doesn't matter._

_You'd think after two years you'd know not to underestimate semantics with me_. 

Sam watched the clock over his living-room couch tick for a full minute, the clicks of the hands and the sound of Josh chewing his burnt toast. They'd had countless arguments about Sam's analog clocks, and Josh's poor eating habits, and Sam's overconsumption of shampoo, and Josh's tendency to leave knives in the sink. The list was spanless, endless. 

_Do you ever think about the future?_

_Not really._

Sam bit his lip and took another swig of his cup of coffee, lukewarm by now. It was Sunday, but if they didn't leave soon they'd be late for real. Something that conspicuous was the last thing they needed, after holding this desperate and devoted and precarious thing together for so long. 

_What I mean is- do you ever think about us. In the future, you know. Do you ever think about_ our _future?_

Josh leaned across the table and kissed him, as sure and passionate as he was two years ago, tasting like citrus and wheat and raspberry jam. 

_Always._

\-------------

It was supposed to be a victory lap. The fanfare, the parade, the pat on their backs saying that this was the one-in-ten day they did something and did it well. In the morning Josh pressed a caffeine-laced kiss to Sam's neck before leaving, and as they ran the rope line Sam clasped his shoulder and squeezed. 

For the first time in his life, Sam wishes he didn't remember. He can call to mind with startling and grotesque clarity the sound of glass shattering, the scrape of his wrist on the concrete, the mangled sound of Toby's voice.

There is no way to explain the terror when the pieces collided together, and their recollections did not add up, and for a brief second, Josh Lyman had vanished off the face of the earth. 

Finding him is worse than the existence of the unanswered question. Sam wishes on the stars and the sun and the blue-red-white sirens that Josh had vanished and stayed hidden forever, so they never had to see or know what blood between his fingers looked like. 

"Josh, I'm here!" 

Sam runs along the hallway, so far away from caring about anything but the man in front of him that had become a distortion instead of a whole person. He grabs onto the side of the gurney as Josh speaks something he can't hear over the doctors and the sirens and the light. Something about New Hampshire, and Sam knows Josh well enough to read his blurry mind and his not-quite-there eyes. He knows those eyes. 

"You came and got me." 

Sam leans over him and brushes Josh's hair back, flecks of dried blood already stuck in it. 

Before Sam can say anything more or wipe away the blood on Josh's forehead, the doctors are taking him away, and he is standing on the sidewalk outside with blood on his hands.

Sam put his nails to his palm, scraping away dried red until new blood formed, and places the vending-machine cigarettes between his fingers in such a quick chain it makes him throw up at the side of the hospital. All around him the sirens, and the news, the yelling, and he can remember with perfect and astounding clarity the last words Josh said to him were, _Hey, way to go_. 

"Sam?" 

Sam turns up and around, wiping bile and spit from his mouth. 

"Yeah?" 

"You should come back in." CJ has streaks of tears down her face, her mascara is smudged, and Sam can't stop thinking about how blurred they all are, how thrown off and sullied. CJ's hair looks like someone painted it in oil and then smeared the paint this way and that. 

But CJ has tears down her cheeks, and Sam knows what that means. 

"He didn't. . . ?" Sam lights another cigarette. He waits for Josh to stop him. 

CJ shakes her head. She takes a shaky inhale and finally seems to see the puke on the sidewalk and the red on Sam's hands.

"I'd ask if you're okay but. . ." she trails off. 

The gloves are off, and there is nothing else left in the world. Instead of feeling insignificant and small, Sam feels gigantic. He fills the edges of the horizon and he can barely guess as to why they kept themselves a secret for so long, what The President was worried about in Iraq, or what Toby's brother's name is. 

"I can't find the moon," he says. The sky is a grey-blue abyss. A terrible night for stargazing, and he can't even find the biggest thing in the sky. 

"Sam, do you," CJ breaks off and sniffs, "Do you need a doctor?"

"I need the moon." 

CJ is holding him then, arms wrapped around his shoulders and Sam wonders why she's shaking so hard until he realizes it's coming from him. These bones are so tired. 

"I know, I know."

"No, you don't. No one did. And now he's-" Sam moves to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand, and then thinks better of it. Josh always carries packages of kleenex with him. Josh has a bad habit of wiping his hands on his pants. Josh always takes a shower when he cries. The remembering comes in sharp flashes, and Sam is aware keenly of the long stretch of time that life has left for him, compared to Josh, who is now only alive in the negatives. 

"Sam, I'm gonna bring you a doctor, okay?" CJ speaks to him like he's twelve again, and he is. Sam resigns himself to his diluted puddle of existence. 

"I don't-" Sam doesn't know what he was going to do or say then until it comes tumbling directly out of his mouth without a filter. 

"I don't know what to do with all the frosted flakes at home," he sobs. 

CJ stills, and then runs a hand over his hair and hugs him tighter. Sam turns into her arms and lets himself run dry on her shoulder. 

"I don't eat frosted flakes. Or pineapple juice. I can't . . . "

Sam pushes her away and retches again, hands on his knees and head throbbing with the pressure of his guts trying to exit himself. Himself, inside-out, along with the world, upside-down. Nothing else comes up, and when the doctors do come outside Sam fights against them. 

"I'm alright, just let me find the moon. I can't _find_ it CJ, you've gotta let me stay." 

Sam tilts his head up to the stars as he's walked into the hospital double-doors, tripping over his feet. And Sam sticks his hand into his pocket, trying to find his cigarettes, that safety net that can make Josh appear if only to scold him. 

And Sam thinks, _You asshole. You mother fucker. What the fuck am I supposed to do without you now?_


End file.
